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Monday, December 26, 2011

Eating up the food miles

I recently heard
a radio interview with Dr I. Eatwell (I can’t remember her real name but she
was a Californian food-head) who told us about her weekly cycle jaunt out of
the small town of Davis in California to pick wild herbs.We were, of course, all supposed to
gasp in admiration at her zeal to seek and eat local. In a sense, she was
emulating the famous French aristocrat who suggested that, in view of the
shortage of bread: "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche" or “Let them eat
cake”. Quite simply, there are not sufficient wild herbs to meet the
gastronomic needs of the firm and courageous citizens of even a small town such
as Davis. Moreover, since Dr I. Eatwell harvested the herbs before the seeding
period, she selfishly pulled the plug on food chain sustainability. The concept
of local food is elitist and unworkable for the general population. So let’s do
the sums. According to Sustainable Table, we should confine our food choice to
100 km radius. Lets extend that to 120 km to allow for the area of a large city.
That translates into about 4524 hectares which if farmed for wheat would yield
38,798,324 kg of wheat, translating into 27,158,826 kg of flour or
108,635,307,000 calories. Assuming a daily energy need of just 2,000 calories,
we would have enough to feed about 150 persons a year.So the theory works for towns with a
population up to 150,000 and of course the nearest other town must be 240 km
away, otherwise there would be territorial battles where their circles overlap.
It just doesn’t work for today’s demography. Of course a few privileged elite
can easily achieve this but its cake for the rest of us.

One of the smart
things mad did which no other species achieved was the division of labour:
“I’ll buy the peas you grow on your farm and you can buy tractor insurance from
me”.The chore of being
responsible for the provision of our own food was passed on to farmers who in
turn passed on responsibility for education, power and so forth. Many centuries
ago, those farmers were local but as modern transport evolved, we bought food
that was grown far away, often continents away. And so the high priests of
healthy eating introduced the concept of “food miles” and “eating in season”. I
will surely eat a strawberry this Christmas or find one on my champagne glass
and I’m not in the least bit bothered that it might come from Spain or Greece.
And I might concede that if I were to pluck a fresh strawberry in season in
County Wexford it would taste better than the imported and out-of-season
variety. But that imported and out-of-season variety still is unmistakably
strawberry in every olfactory sense if you’ll excuse the pun (did I just
punnet!). Not only does it taste and smell of strawberry, but it has the exact
nutritional composition that the in-season County Wexford strawberry has and I
can vary my diet to include imported and out-of-season fish, fruit, vegetables,
yams and so on. The overall health of the nation would improve if we were to
eat more fruit and more vegetables. Any implication that these foods have to be
sourced locally and in-season is utterly unhelpful.

Food miles are
another obsession with the high priests of health eating. The implication of
counting food miles is that local is best and the greater the food mile the
greater the sin. As ever, when put under the microscope, things are not so
straightforward. An apple, grown locally and sold at the end of the season just
before a new harvest, carries little mileage but it has consumed a significant
quantity of energy keeping it nice and juicy through autumn and into spring.
Without that energy consuming technological intervention, the apples would
rot.In contrast, a New
Zealand apple, just harvested in that beautiful country and consumed in Dublin
carries huge mileage but has used relatively little energy. Locally grown low
mileage tomatoes require a glasshouse and yet more energy while imported ones
are grown where the sun shines all day, yielding high mileage and low energy. And of course, one of the biggest
contributors to the energy cost of food occurs when it leaves the supermarket
shelf. Driving there and back, freezing, chilling and cooking food all gobbles
up energy. And of course, there is food waste. Sin scéal eile, which, for the Sassenachs
among you, translates into: “That’s another story”

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"Ever seen a fat fox ~ Human obesity explored"

About Me

I graduated from University College Dublin in 1971 with an Masters in Agricultural Chemistry, took a PhD at Sydney University in 1976 and joined the University of Southampton Medical School as a lecturer in human nutrition in 1977. In 1984 I returned to Ireland to take up a post at the Department of Clinical Medicine Trinity College Dublin and was appointed as professor of human nutrition. In 2006 I left Trinity and moved to University College Dublin as Director of the UCD Institute of Food and Health. I am a former President of the Nutrition Society and I've served on several EU and UN committees on nutrition and Health. I have published over 350+ peer reviewed scientific papers in Public Health Nutrition and Molecular Nutrition and am principal investigator on several national and EU projects (www.ucd.ie/jingo; www.food4me.org). My popular books are "Something to chew on ~ challenging controversies in human nutrition" and "Ever seen a fat fox: human obesity explored"